[MD] The relativity of the MoQ

[Ham Priday]

On 28 Aug 2009 at 11:41 PM, "John Carl" <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:



> So Ham, I'm guilty of invoking the "evil of our culture" eh?
> And just by asking a simple question!  Imagine that.
> Please allow me to examine your words to find where I'm
> invoking this great evil, and what it portends...

When I first spotted this post, I thought DMB had decided to return from his 
"burnout".
His brand of ridicule must be contagious. You've taken Platt's and Rand's 
quotes out of context in an epistle of creative satire that is beneath your 
dignity.

It's not worth my time to argue with someone who thinks intellects can be 
quantified like a bushel of apples, or who can't see that collectivism by 
the state is the first step toward tyranny.

You haven't read Ayn Rand, yet you "know she tried to hold a cult-like 
followership together."  What do you call a group of elitists who deny 
having a subjective mind of their own, demean all transcendental theory, and 
dogmatically quote the words of their leader as the authoritative answer to 
every question?

I expected my comments to produce antagonistic responses, but not from you, 
John.  Needless to say, I'm disappointed.  I'm also convinced more than ever 
that the nihilistic
tilt of this forum makes an MoQ breakthrough highly unlikely.

Good luck in finding a philosophical approach better suited to your 
intellect.

--Ham


>> On 28 Aug 2009 at 7:50, John Carl wrote:
>>
>>  Platt,
>>
>>> Isn't a "collective" simply a quantity of individuals?   How can a 
>>> single
>>> individual intellectual person be valued above a collection of 
>>> intellects?
>>
>> There you have it, folks!
>>
>> John has just invoked a major misconception of the postmodern age: 'The
>> Greater Good'.  Not only does this ideology lead to moral confusion and 
>> the
>> death of individualism, but I wouId go so far as to pronounce it the 
>> "evil
>> of our culture".
>>
>> This is going to get me into hot water with many of you Pirsig acolytes,
>> yet it needs to be said.
>
> The individual human being is the most precious entity on earth.
>
> As if this was any great insight.  To a subjective mindset, the only value
> is the self.  Your entire metaphysics could be wrapped up in the simple
> aphorism, "Love thyself" then.  Which is not any new formulation of 
> thought.
> In fact, I'd say with our current classroom culture of teaching blind
> self-affirmation for every student - You are special, just like everyone
> else - is the true source of evil in our culture because that makes any
> individual human quality irrelevant.  Since we're all individuals and 
> since
> our individual sensibility of values are so precious to each and every
> individual us, we don't need to really pay attention to true values 
> outside
> of ourselves.  It's the ineffable specialness of each of us.    Yay us.
>
> If we can't put a price on the individual life, by what calculus can we
>> measure the value of  "a collection of lives"?
>
> Well by that formulation then we certainly cannot lessen the value of a
> collection simply because it's more than one priceless life.  If you can't
> compare value, then you can't.
>
>> There's no such thing as a collection of intellects or a collective
>>  intellect.
>
> You wouldn't call a faculty committee a collection of intellects?  True,
> they are not isolated intellects floating in the world sans body or 
> society
> - but they each contain an intellect that is being added to the other
> intellects in the room with various inputs and knowledge that makes the 
> sum
> more informed and "smarter" than any individual intellect *could* be.
>
>>> Your intellect like your life is yours and yours alone.
>
> Gee thanks I really needed that.
> not.
>
>>> (See quote from Pirsig's SODV about individual values.)
>>> If you wish to persist in believing a collection of intellects exists,
>>> then you must also see that history is full of examples where a
>>> majority of intellects has been wrong.
>
> Yup.  And history is also full of (and written by) examples of the 
> majority
> coming down on the side of "the right".  Good thing we've got a sound
> metaphysical basis to tell the difference.
>
>> In the middle of the last century, Ayn Rand wrote prophetically:
>
> Oh puh-leaze... I know very little about Rand, but I do know she tried to
> hold a cult-like followership together.  She sure believed in collectives
> when she was the one sitting pretty on the apex.
>
>> "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage
>> where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the 
>> citizens
>> may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of
>> human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
>
> Yeah.  Real prophetic.  Right now I don't see a lot of brute force
> government.  They can't even keep order in relatively simple desert
> countries where the land is flat and there aren't many trees from behind
> which to shoot - an american tradition going back some time. the
> government-military complex is way too incompetent to take on the American
> people if push came to shove.  Duh.  We set it up that way on purpose.
>
>> And in The Fountainhead ...
>>
>> "From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from
>> the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a
>> single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.
>
> High falutin' words to glorify the self-evident fact that, yeah, we do
> think.
>
>> "But the mind is an attribute of the individual.  There is no such thing 
>> as
>> a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought.  An
>> agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise of or an average
>> drawn upon many individual thoughts.  It is a secondary consequence.  The
>> primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man 
>> alone.
>> We can divide a meal among many men.  We cannot digest it in a collective
>> stomach.  No man use his lungs to breathe for another man.  No man can 
>> use
>> his brain to think for another.  All the functions of the body and spirit
>> are private.  They cannot be shared or transferred."
>
> Utter crap.  If you think the highest ideal is the isolated individual 
> with
> no input out output with the rest of humanity, then go live in a cave and
> contemplate your navel.  I'm sure there's all kinds of individual quality
> you'll find down there in the lint traps of your soul.
>
> But so friggin' what?  If it is not accepted by a society of intellectual
> peers, it is nothing.  Literally and figuratively nothing.  Of no value
> whatsoever, because a voice hollering down an empty well is a meaningless
> voice, and I don't care if its singing with the tongues of men OR angels.
> It's nothing.
>
> To be something, to have any value at all, there must be a communication - 
> a
> communing - a community of teller/listener at its most basic, but in
> philosophy the community is so much bigger that to ignore it and focus on
> the individual - in an age where individualism is rampant and killing us -
>
> Well.  It just sucks.  That's all.
>
> Ayn Rand.  She'd  throw quality out the window just to be the queen bee.
>
>> Until we realize the truth of this epistemology, we will be frantically
>> trying to fit the pieces of our experiential world, including its 
>> esthetic
>> and moralistic attributes, into a unified whole which does not exist.
>
> Ah yes, and what a shame that would be.  Assuming a unifying good that
> doesn't exist, why just think of all the harm that would be done.  People
> would treat each other as if they were important rather than emeffers in 
> my
> way when I'm waiting in line at Walmart.
>
>> This "whole" that we struggle to construct as a collectivist paradigm is
>> our secular culture's substitute for the Creator or Primary Source.  It 
>> will
>> never work, because ultimate reality is not a collection of patterns,
>> levels, parts, or ideas.  It is One in  Essence.
>
> Well, as much as I appreciate your assessment of the situation (not much, 
> in
> case you didn't already know) I'll have to pass on your formulation of
> ultimate reality.  It may work for your navel but it doesn't work in mine.
> And it's all about the individual, right?
>
>> Thanks for your time and tolerance.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Ham
>
> You're welcome.  I hope you don't get all offended at my attitude and 
> storm
> off into the great emptiness... but honestly Ham.  Ayn Rand is a prophet?
> You and Platt are gonna have to be brought to the woodshed.  I can see it.